No matter what industry you work in, reaching potential customers can be a challenge. A recent Spiceworks study showed that on average IT buyers are being contacted 22 times per week by technology sales reps or marketers—13 times by email, five times by phone, two times through online forums or communities, once through social media, and once by physical mail.

December can be a hectic month of vacations and celebrations, so it can be easy to assume your customers and prospects will be difficult to reach or that they’ll be slow to make a buying decision. As December comes to a close and a new year approaches, though, many small and medium-sized businesses are looking for ways to spend their remaining IT budget. This creates a big opportunity for MSPs that are ready to capitalize on it.

I’m about to make somebody (you?) a lot of money because I’m about to give you an idea for raising your fees that will allow you to prove to yourself you’re leaving a LOT of money on the table. First, a story to set the table …

I’m planning on having carriage-wood garage doors put in the house, and I reach out to a company locally for a quote. First of all, it takes them two weeks to respond with pricing — TWO WEEKS! Second, they don’t come by to talk about what I need, want, etc. They E-MAIL ME a very poorly scanned document that has some various styles, wood types, and windows, asking me to pick one. (Wait, it gets better.)

All marketing processes and strategies need time to work, and telemarketing is no exception. You need to invest a year in any marketing strategy before your efforts will begin bearing fruit. It’s disheartening for any business owner to think they could invest a year’s worth of time and budget into something that might not work out. Unfortunately, that can and does happen all the time. Why?

If you’re struggling to close sales, this is my New Year’s gift to you. Below is a list of nine ways you can specifically build TRUST to close more sales. My suggestion would be to take one at a time and work on incorporating it into your sales and marketing processes.

But first, a quick refresher on salesmanship. When selling “IT services,” get it in your head that what you’re REALLY selling is trust. Not contracts. Not bundles. Not features. Not monitoring 24/7/365. TRUST. Clients largely have no idea what should or shouldn’t be included in a managed services agreement, and cannot tell if you’re good, bad, or somewhere in between (welcome to the world of selling intangibles). Therefore, sales are largely based on who the prospect feels they like and who they can TRUST to do the job well.

MSPs that fail to prospect are destined to fail. To successfully bring in more business as an MSP, you need either a dedicated sales team or a dedicated block of time to engage with potential customers and find new prospects you can talk to. Prospecting is an essential part to the sales cycle, and when it’s done correctly, it can help keep your sales pipeline full.

A healthy pipeline isn’t created in a day, though, so it is crucial to set aside at least an hour every day to work on it. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to find one or two new leads and be done. Prospecting is a continual process that can determine how successful your MSP will be.

The hardest part about prospecting can be picking up the phone and organizing your time to prospect successfully. Recently, we read High Profit Prospecting by Mark Hunter and learned a few techniques to help you plan a successful prospecting strategy and overcome common prospecting challenges.

Once in a while when cold calling for your MSP, you’re likely to encounter what we describe as the managed services perfect storm: a company with at least 20 computers (but less than 50), who is unhappy with their current provider and has somewhere between 90 and 120 days remaining on their current agreement (or is in a month-to-month agreement).

Now, that conversation happens about once out of every 200 conversations, which is to say, about every 2,000 dials. At a conservative 10 dials per hour, that’s less than once a quarter for a full-time caller. So, what’s happening during the other 199 conversations you’re having?

“Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.” —Albert Einstein

BACK TO SCHOOL LESSON:Is it laziness or stupidity? On a recent sales call with a company that will remain nameless, I stumped the salesperson with the very first question I had about how her software compared with the company we were currently using (but were unhappy with) and with one other competitor we were considering. Not only did she not know how to answer that, but she wasn’t even familiar with either of the companies I mentioned, both of which are very well-known, direct competitors to her.

My second question was, “Show me how this integrates into the CRM we’re currently using,” which is a very basic question that most prospects would have due to the nature of what she is selling. Again, she was completely clueless other than to say, “Yes, it integrates,” but she couldn’t show me more because their demo site wasn’t working.

Every day I get calls from brand-new MSPs asking how much our services cost. I send them away with some advice and this painful truth: You can’t job out your sales prospecting until you’ve become successful at sales prospecting!

It’s a vicious cycle, but the good news is you can do it, you can do it yourself, and you can start right now if you follow a few simple tips. We built our business from zero, starting with nothing but one person, a laptop, and a phone. You can, too! Here are my best sales tips for new business owners with limited time and limited budgets: